WOLF now produces its own newscast by themselves. No help needed anymore.

It seems like a station in Northeastern Pennsylvania has decided to ditch partners in favor of doing something all by themselves. In fact, it has already started.

Since yesterday, Sunday January 1st, which happened to be New Year’s Day, WOLF 56 now produces its own 10:00pm newscast all by themselves. FOX 56 News – First at 10:00 is still an hour-long newscast, 7 days a week that is now produced in-house. It was previously produced by WBRE 28 (NBC) that lasted for 6 years but the agreement was dropped on December 31st, the day before. Still… with this new in-house operation, it still competes against WNEP 16 (ABC)’s half-hour nightly 10:00pm newscast for its second digital subchannel WNEP 2 (Antenna TV) for local news at that timeslot in the market.

“We are extremely excited to give the viewers and advertisers what they have been asking for. Our years with WBRE have been great but it was time to give the area another voice.”

As part of the change to going in-house, the station has hired anchors, meteorologists, multimedia journalists, photographers and news managers.

The on-air personalities highlighted are anchor Dayne Marae, a New Jersey native who most recently worked at as an anchor at KRBC 9 (NBC) in Abilene, TX; Brian Sheehan, a journalist from Bucks County who previously worked as the executive producer and host for The Daily Meal in New York City; Alex Belser, a journalist coming from the Altoona-based WTAJ 10 (CBS); Katie Berlin, a journalist who interned for NBCUniversal in Los Angeles and Jade Jarvis, a Philadelphia native who began her career at WTXF 29 (FOX) in Philadelphia.

WOLF 56’s News Manager, Dawn Miller:

“It will be great to be a three-station news market again after so many years of only having two.We’re looking forward to covering the local stories in communities throughout our coverage area, everywhere from Pottsville to Williamsport, Stroudsburg, Scranton and beyond.”

The station is owned by New Age Media but is operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group under a MSA – master service agreement.

So a new news department makes it a three-station news market again for the first time since WYOU 22 (CBS) shut theirs down in 2009 and combined it with WBRE 28 (NBC). With the area’s only hour-long 10:00pm newscast, I think viewers may react positively to these news but we’ll see if they will watch it.

DISCLAIMER (new to 2017 on the blog): Some of the info used came from The Citizens’ Voice, which first reported on this story. We give them credit for some of the information used here.

10 thoughts on “WOLF now produces its own newscast by themselves. No help needed anymore.”

I wonder what’s the tipping point for Sinclair to do in-house news in their smaller markets. As seen on this site, FOX Charleston has in-house news, but that was because of common ownership at WCIV. There’s this market; and you have some anomalies like Toledo (news from Fort Wayne?) and Tallahassee (WCTV produces news on WTWC 40.2 via a previous agreement).

Actually, there is no news on WTLH; the FOX affiliation was moved to WTWC 40.2 (still branded FOX 49) two years ago. The newscasts that were on WTLH air on 40.2… New Age Media tried to sell its stations to Sinclair, but this MSA stuff and affiliation change happened instead.

Good question and your right… WPGH 53 is the largest FOX affiliate without its own news department. Before they disbanded it 2006, WRAZ 50 in Raleigh was the largest without one and is still without one thanks to WRAL 5.

Here’s an interesting twist: Sinclair is talking about a merger with Tribune; Tribune operates WNEP (Dreamcatcher Broadcasting, which is owned by a former Tribune Exec, owns WNEP). If this does happen the FOX56 News would end up where it started in 1991: produced by WNEP, and Wilkes-Barre / Scranton would be back to a two station news market. The FCC forced Tribune to spin off WNEP to Dreamcatcher because WNEP’s signal overlapped with the are covered by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper, also owned by Tribune. The FCC though might not allow Sinclair to Control four TV stations: WNEP/WOLF/WSWB/WQMY.